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Salami Dreamin'uses the eye-popping, hand-printed images of Columbus artist Michelle Maguire and the written anecdotes of her husband, Aaron Beck, to form a portrait of Michelle's blunt, funny, completely unimpressed, Italian-American Aunt Doll, an 84-year-old Canton, Ohio, native who loves cursing, cured meats and the NFL. According to Michelle, "The gist of her story is, enjoy every chicken wing while you holler at the Cleveland Browns on your gigantic analog TV, because we aren’t here forever." Michelle shared more about the book with her friend Erica Anderson, the Wex's Creative Services Director. It's available at the Wexner Center Store, along with original prints by Michelle, as part of the State Line selection of Ohio-made products.

Erica Anderson: I don't know many people who wake up and decide to make a book on their own. A 'zine, maybe, but a 68-page, hardcover, signature-sewn book with 14 silkscreen and litho prints, and letterpress printed copy?! It's just wild to me! What made you aim for a project this large-scale and ambitious?

Michelle Maguire: I was in the mood to really push myself and I wanted to learn how to build a book. But not just a book of straight photos—I needed the images to really pop, so I started playing around with them in Photoshop. I began to think in layers and about the photos becoming prints. So I started hanging out at OSU’s Logan Elm Press, and then the Libraries’ Conservation Unit, and then soon after met Floodwall Press. I’d continually lose my mind over the endless possibilities. I was excited about the tactile properties inherent with various printmaking techniques—the lightly “kissed” impression of letterpress and foil stamping, the matte finish and color vibrancy achieved with hand-mixed acrylic inks, and the way they sit on the surface of a cotton paper.

It all felt totally possible because I kept finding people whose skills I believed in, and they all agreed to help me make it happen. I learned so much from everyone who was involved in bringing this thing to life, and I still marvel at what we were able to pull off. We all have day jobs, so production happened on the weekends, and it was an enormous undertaking.

EA: Can you share some backstory on the firecracker of a lady that inspired this book?

MM: That firecracker is my Great-Aunt Doll: one of my grandma’s six younger siblings, the family wedding soup maker, die-hard NFL fan, and tidy keeper of an immaculate Canton, Ohio, Cape Cod. A lot of people see images of her beautiful white hair and think she’s this sweet old lady, but there’s nothing too sweet about her. She’s ready to take a shovel to the back of my head most of the time, and I’m one of the people she likes most.

Every time I’m over at Aunt Doll’s place, I take pictures, much to her annoyance. She’s not shy expressing her feelings about having a camera on her—she threatens to physically insert the recording device into my body, and then immediately forgets it was ever there in the first place. But that’s her attitude about most everything: she’s perpetually put out, and always mildly disgusted. She’ll cuss you out in one breath and in the very next, offer you a salami sandwich.

My grandma and Aunt Doll married a pair of brothers (my grandpa and his brother Phil). They claim to have tried hooking up a third sister with a third brother to make it a three-piece, but that one “didn’t take.” My childhood was spent being surrounded by this loud, boisterous group of Italian Americans, and it was fun.

EA: Tell us about Aaron's and your relationship as a creative pair, and how it influenced the genesis of the book.

MM: We were together the entire time the material was being gathered, so it felt only natural to work as a team to tell her story. Collaborating with Aaron was great. I knew if he was going to be involved that it would have a soul, the tone would be just right, and it would be peppered with both hilarity and tenderness. He really nailed it. The very best thing is to listen to my family erupt into laughter as they read it for the first time.

Aaron’s known Aunt Doll for 15 years now, and has spent most of that time trying to commit to memory her every word. I’m not sure she even sees him and me as two separate beings—together, I think we’re just one collective pain in her ass.

EA: I was lucky enough to be a sounding board for you during the creation of this book. Your courage and determination never ceased to amaze me. There were so many times that you could have settled, cut a corner, or given up. Any advice for those intrepid artists and designers who are called by some wild inner voice to do their own thing, their own way?

MM: I had a pretty clear vision of how I wanted it to look and feel (literally), and I’m lucky that I had such a great team to rely on for guidance. Printmaking is a thrill, and it’s important to embrace the medium’s qualities and allow it to do some speaking for you. Edition bookmaking is no small task. It made for an intricate working process at every step. For a year and a half we all chipped away at it. This is technical and tedious and will probably put most people (not you, though!) to sleep, but in order to have alternating types of paper for the text and image pages, it meant I had to tip-in a single sheet to each of the book’s seven signatures, over and over and over again throughout the entire edition, using hinges made from Japanese fiber paper and adhering them with wheat paste. It was worth it, and it created a beautiful visual separation for image versus text, but it took forever and a day and nearly drove me bananas.

My advice would be to go for it. Aside from a GCAC materials grant, we funded this book ourselves, which meant we were able to have total control. That’s huge. And it feels incredible. From the start, I thought, who knows, this may be the only time I get the chance to make a book. Let’s just blow it out of the water. That kind of thinking always leads to new things.

EA: What's next for Salami Dreamin'?

MM: A trade edition! A commercially printed, larger edition, with tweaked content and format, at a way more affordable retail price. Thus making this first hand-bound deluxe batch of 50 all the more special. I'm excited about creating another version of this book, one that is wider-reaching and much more accessible, and am now in the beginning stages of researching printers and exploring my options. I think it’s going to be a risograph-printed book this time around! I love thinking about all parts of the book being printed color-by-color/layer-by-layer all over again, this time much more loosely, and I'm totally excited. It feels good to keep going and to give people options. And I'm kinda hooked on making books.

A Columbus native, musician and storyteller Dane Terry will be at the Wex December 9-10 for the local debut of his solo musical theater work, Bird in the House. Featuring songs from his 2015 album Color Movies, the piece uses Dane's childhood memories as a launchpad for a surreal vision of coming of age and coming out in the Midwest, replete with missing dogs, men with guns, and alien beings. How does the fiction relate to the truth? Dane offered to illuminate.

"So it's technically true that Bird In The House is a work of fiction. That is, the actual events in the show never really happened. However I wanted to write a story about childhood, and seeing as my own childhood is only accessible through feelings and dim memories, the language of the show is very expressionistic. In other words, everything that happens in this story is what would have to happen to adult me to make me feel like little Dane felt about significantly less dramatic events. Bits of my parents' (and their parents') childhoods also got chewed in the mix.

"Was I contacted by actual aliens? (They do seem to love hillbillies.) Well, no, but I was put on a hostile planet in a tiny broken body without knowing the culture or the language or really anything at all about my own existence, my only tool the largely indecipherable rivers of sensory data fountaining in from every hole in my head. In a sense, I was surrounded by aliens.

"The point isn't that I had a rough childhood, it's that childhood is inherently rough. Though I came into a world of money problems, alcohol abuse, divorce and cultural violence, and as a queer kid to boot (still far from the worst as lots go), it would be unfair not to say my parents did a fantastic job. I never wanted for anything and felt loved intensely. Those people are not in this show. But I was sure that when the truth came out about the way I was I would have to run and hide, to live on freight trains and eat rats and never have friends or a family again. So, I think as a child I saw a world that would be easier to lose. That dark other-world is the fog in the graveyard of this show.

On December 1,1989—the same year the Wexner Center opened its doors—an organized group of arts professionals launched Day With(out) Art, a yearly commemoration and call to action in response to the AIDS crisis, timed to coincide with the World Heath Organization’s World AIDS Day. The Wex participated from the beginning, joining over 800 arts organizations, museums and galleries nationwide in closing galleries, shrouding artworks, and sharing information about the disease.

The purpose of the day has evolved over time from mourning to celebrating the lives of those lost, encouraging the creation of work about the AIDS pandemic, and supporting programming by artists living with HIV. Throughout, Visual AIDS, a New York-based contemporary arts organization committed to raising AIDS awareness and spurring dialogue about HIV issues, has been the driving force behind the initiative.

For the 2016 Day With(out) Art, the Wex will join dozens of arts spaces around the world in partnering with Visual AIDS to present a special one-day program. Screening in The Box, Compulsive Practiceis a video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. Curators for the compilation include a Wex Film/Video Studio alum, video artist Alex Juhasz, who was here in 2007 to work on her film Scale: Measuring Might in the Media Age.

From video diaries to civil disobedience, holiday specials and backstage antics, Betamax to YouTube, Compulsive Practice displays a diversity of artistic approaches, experiences, and expectations. The compulsive video practices of these artists serve many purposes—cure, treatment, outlet, lament, documentation, communication—and have many tones—obsessive, driven, poetic, neurotic, celebratory. Compulsive Practice demonstrates the place of technology, self-expression, critique, and community in the many decades and the many experiences of artists and activists living with AIDS.

Attention, Central Ohio artists: As the Wex moves into the final stretch of Leap Before You Look, an exhibition highlighting the impact of Black Mountain College on generations of contemporary artists, we'd like to see how the artists of the small North Carolina school have impacted you. For the Make the Leap challenge, we're asking you to create something new in the Black Mountain College legacy, to be reviewed by a jury of Columbus arts professionals for a chance to win a year's membership to the Wex or a gift card to the Wexner Center Store. Ready to get started?

• Make something inspired by your visit. It can be visual art or crafts, a musical riff, poem or mini narrative, a film, performance or movement piece - whatever can be shared in an image or 60 seconds of video. Remember, the teachers and students of Black Mountain College did a lot with a little. The piece doesn't need to be elaborate or work-intensive, and it should reflect your specific inspiration in some way.

• Post your work on Instagram. Comment with the title and the artist(s) or work(s) that inspired you. Tag it with @wexarts and #maketheleap to make your entry official.

• Do it by midnight on Wednesday, December 28.

• Our jury will choose a winner and we'll share it on Tuesday, January 3.

• The winning artist will receive a $75 (Friend) membership to the Wex for 2017 or a $75 gift card to the Wexner Center Store.

The rules: Valid Nov. 29-Dec. 28, 2016. No purchase necessary. Entrants must be 16 years of age or older. Entries must be works created on or after September 17, 2016. Limit 3 entries per person. Employees of the Wexner Center for the Arts and their families are not eligible. The Wexner Center reserves the right to share images of entries in marketing materials, including website and social media channels. Instagram entries must be tagged with "@wexarts" and "#maketheleap" to be considered. Non-Instagram method of entry is available; email mstarker@wexarts.org for details.

With the holidays on the way, some of our staff and regulars are using the knowledge they've amassed from perusing and recharging in the Wexner Center Store to steer you toward some great gift ideas. Their list covers giftees of virtually all ages, a wide price range, and sources from the New York Times to Columbus-based design companies. If we left out something you love (or you want to drop someone a well-placed hint), feel free to expand on our Store gift list with your own pic on Instagram or Facebook. Tag us so we can share, too.

"Enamel pins really are the new rock buttons: better in quality, they don’t fall off your clothing, and small in price. The pins by People I’ve Loved are both illustrative and funny, great for anyone on your shopping list. The Black Mountain College pin being a reproduction of the school’s original logo, is perfect for art and design lovers. Keeping with the Black Mountain spirit, the exhibition t-shirt features the typographic identity of the show printed locally by Alison Rose with one pass of ink for a soft and vintage feel."

"This is an incredible publication and an inspiring read for anyone. Learn about innovative, creative women from all over the world, and find empowerment and hope for the future through their stories."

"I visit the store too much and I buy too many books, so my gifts will be books. I’ve also been thinking a lot about past exhibitions at the Wexner Center—I’m a classics professor so I think about the past a lot—and about how we need to reactivate the past to bring something new. The first exhibition I saw here was Part Object Part Sculpture. It was on my first campus visit when I came from Cambridge in 2006. I was flying in and I had all these interviews, but I knew about those Cy Twombly sculptures in the exhibition, so when I had a 15-minute break I ran to see those sculptures. I was just amazed by the Wexner Center. You can look through all these exhibition catalogues and go back in time."

“Everyone needs mugs, you can’t have too many. These mugs by And Here We Are are locally made and appropriately cheeky. Perfect gift exchange, friend or hostess/host gift for the holidays. Who wouldn’t smile drinking coffee from either one in the morning?”

"M. Sasek’s large picture books were my first window on the world in elementary school. The author and illustrator in the late 1950s and early 1960s crafted travel books highlighting sights and cultures in places that, for a child, were only names (Israel, Edinburgh, Munich) heard on the network news, seen on colorful wall maps and globes, or mentioned in adult conversations. Sasek created a series of these books that spark a child’s curiosity but still charm an adult’s, including this one. My copy of This is Greece (where my maternal grandfather was born), purchased at the Wex store a couple years ago, remains a cherished item. The Sasek books are part of a larger children’s book collection at the store, beautiful books that spark creativity and culture among tomorrow’s artists and storytellers."